One Big Mistake: a friends to lovers rom-com

by Whitney Barbetti

  “Ninth,” I corrected, regretting it instantly. I didn’t want to remind him of this time in my life, but somehow admitting to ninth grade was significantly less embarrassing than tenth grade.

  “That’s right. You told me at homecoming as we waited in line for pics.”

  I remembered it vividly. My braces had just come off and I’d traded glasses for contact lenses. Hollis had helped me with my hair and my makeup, and I’d felt more confident than I had in years. The crush I’d carefully nurtured, hidden away from Keane, could no longer be kept from him. So as we waited for photos, watching couple after couple posing the traditional, guy’s hand on the girl’s waist, I somehow thought that was the perfect time to come out and admit that I liked Keane as more than a friend.

  To his credit, he’d handled it like a champ, letting me down gently with “I think you’re the prettiest girl, Navy.” I should’ve felt elated at that, except the follow-up ‘but’ was so audible that he didn’t even have to say it. “I think we’re good as friends. I don’t wanna mess us up.”

  Thoroughly embarrassed, I’d given him my first metal-less grin and had nodded enthusiastically, making agreeing noises like it was the best idea on the planet. And when it was our time to pose, we did some half-hearted Charlie’s Angels pose instead of the couple pose.

  “Pretty sure I still have that photo,” he said, adjusting to grab his wallet from his pocket.

  “Oh, can’t wait to see those beautiful bangs of mine,” I said less than enthusiastic.

  “Here.” He produced the wallet-sized photo; its corners bent and starting to peel. Keane’s too-big suit looked comical on him and my sky-blue and rhinestone embellished slip of a dress gave me instant flashbacks to my awkward years.

  “Your bangs actually look good,” he said thoughtfully, turning his head to the side as he admired it. “But you look like you just smelled a bad fart.”

  “It was probably from you,” I said, instead of stating the obvious: I’d just admitted to a years-long crush and had been shot down, how was I supposed to look?

  “My charm needed refinement back then, so you’re probably right.”

  As he tucked the photo back into his wallet, beside the other ones from the following homecomings and proms, a memory from that night flashed in my brain like it was lit by neon lights.

  “Wonder where Tori is?” Keane had asked moments after the photographer had caught our photo. If my expression was somewhat sour during the actual photo-taking, I was sure it’d taken a complete downward turn at that.

  “I dunno,” I remember replying glumly.

  Keane, oblivious to my mood, had grabbed my hand and pulled me through the throngs of people until he found Tori, who grinned back at him and cracked a joke that he immediately laughed at. I then had snuck off to the bathroom with Hollis in tow, cried a few pathetic tears and repaired my makeup before joining our friend group. Keane was on the dance floor with Tori, slow dancing to the same song that he’d serenaded me with on the way to the dance in the backseat of his mom’s car—Bruno Mars’s Just the Way You Are. To say it stung was putting it lightly.

  Keane had always been my dance partner. My number one. He’d hip-bumped me through every middle school dance, so beginning our first year of high school—and our first dance—without him as my partner made everything come to a halt in my brain. Between what I’d admitted and what was to come, I’d need to adjust my perception of the friendship. It wasn’t a friendship that would lead to romance. It wouldn’t lead anywhere.

  But I could be his friend. I could do that. As long as I could get used to seeing him serenade people who weren’t me.

  Tori was Hollis’s friend, so luckily I didn’t make any terribly mean comments about Tori the way I might have. Being an awkward fifteen and jealous brought out the worst in people, and I was no exception. Besides, it wasn’t like it was Tori’s fault that she was gorgeous and charismatic and the life of the party. Keane was those things too—then and now—so it was no surprise they had gravitated toward one another. Didn’t make it hurt any less.

  Now, eight years later, the sting was nothing. Keane and I had the best friendship. He was there for me the way only he could be, and he’d been right—our paths would have forked in an irreparable way, and he wouldn’t be the friend to me he was now if we’d let romance cloud a good thing. I don’t think you ever really got over your first crush. But I’d accepted a long time ago that friends were what we were meant to be.

  “Where’s your brain?” Keane asked, sliding back to his seat across from me. “You look faraway.”

  “I feel faraway.”

  “Guy trouble?”

  “You could say that,” I replied after a moment. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about what you’re doing with your windfall of cash. Please don’t tell me you’re spending it on hookers and hard drugs.”

  He laughed. “Grandpa left us the land and just enough money to actually do something with it. Not enough to get us into big trouble, but enough for me to re-insulate the cabin, get some new appliances, fix the siding and roof. Mostly cosmetic shit. That’s all it needs.”

  “I can’t wait to see what you do with it.” And I meant it. It was great seeing Keane excited about a project. Unlike the rest of our group of friends, he hadn’t gone to college right after high school. He’d gotten a job, worked hard three seasons out of the year in order to spend one season having fun. And now that he’d have the rental income from the cabin once it was fixed up, he might be able to pursue other things instead of working so damn hard for the bulk of the year. “I’m sure he’d be proud.”

  “I hope so. I mean, it’s not done yet. But we’ll see what it becomes. And then, with whatever’s left in my bank account after the renovations—that’ll be allocated to my hookers and hard drugs fund.”

  I yawned. Now that I was more relaxed, it was easy to think about bed. I studied the clock and debated calling it a night. As fun as Keane was, my bed beckoned.

  5

  KEANE

  I knew if I didn’t change the venue, we’d eat our pizza and part ways, leaving Navy alone to grapple with whatever thoughts were causing such a pained look on her face.

  “Hey, I know we both love Rhonda but let’s bounce.”

  “Yeah,” she said, crumpling her napkin onto her plate. “I should probably go home and get some rest.”

  “Nah. Come on. We are twenty-three years old. We’re not about to go home to bed this early on a Friday night.” I slid out of the booth and held my hand out for her. “We’re going dancing.”

  “Oh, no. No, no, no.”

  I popped my fingers in my ears. “I can’t hear you, sorry, let’s goooo.” I slid the rest of the pizza slices into a to-go box and trashed our plates. “Word on the street is that that new place, Bunny’s, is hoppin’.”

  She groaned. “That’s a terrible pun. And what are you even talking about, calling it a ‘new place’? Our parents went there.”

  “Shit.” I stopped in my tracks. “So, that makes it retro then. Like my hair.”

  “Your hair was not retro. And Bunny’s is where you go when you’re looking for ass—old ass.”

  “Perfect. I am so into grandma’s right now. You don’t even know.” I was trying to get a laugh out of her, and when I finally succeeded, I pulled her out of Debbie’s with the energy to run all the way to the dive bar that was Bunny’s. But since it was across one interstate and down a highway, I did the responsible thing and unlocked the car.

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said, pointing to her aunt’s car on the other end of the parking lot.

  “Oh, no, ho, ho you won’t.”

  “What?” She held her keys mid-air as I approached her.

  “Your keys are no good here,” I said, swiping them from her and putting them in my pocket.

  “I don’t think it works like that.”

  “It does tonight. Come on. I’ll drive you. I’ll be the sober, responsible one and you’ll
be the drunk one. A role reversal always makes life exciting, doesn’t it?”

  “Then how will I get home?”

  Ah. She had me there. “We can pick up Isabel’s car in the morning.”

  “If it was my car, I’d say yes. But I don’t feel comfortable leaving it in Debbie’s parking lot. It could get towed.”

  “Good point.” I mulled it over for a minute. “How about this. Let’s park it at my house and then we’ll go to Bunny’s from there. You can sleep over, like we did back in the day.”

  “It won’t be as fun if you don’t drink too,” she said.

  “Okay. So, we both go to my house, get a ride to Bunny’s and then a ride back. Then no one drives.”

  She thought about it a long moment before nodding. “I’ll follow you there,” she said.

  “Maybe this is a mistake,” Navy said, pressed up against my side as tightly as she could. Her hand squeezed mine in a vise grip, like we were walking through a tornado and she expected to be swept from me any moment.

  Granted, I hadn’t been to Bunny’s in a year or so, and maybe I had drunk goggles on when I’d imagined its charm. Right now, with the dozens of eyes staring at us as we made our way past whiskey-soaked patrons, I was wondering whether I’d ever even been here before.

  “It’s fine,” I told her, pushing her into the last two seats at the bar. I understood why no one else was sitting at them, given that a giant structure-supporting column separated the seats. This was a bad idea.

  Navy took her seat tentatively and once she was settled, I scooted my seat around the column so that I was pressed tightly up against her once again; the wall and I sandwiching her in. “See?” I said with a half-grimace and half-smile. “Cozy.”

  “Mm-hmm. Like a murder mystery.”

  “Oh, don’t even worry about it. You’re not gonna get murdered,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t one-hundred percent feel.

  “I’ve seen him before,” Navy said, wrapping her purse around her wrist like it was a handcuff. She attempted to subtly shrug toward the reeking pile of cigarettes that vaguely resembled a human. “On the police department’s Facebook page,” she hissed in my ear. “I think they were looking for him.”

  “Probably were. But being that this place has the reputation that it does, wouldn’t they know precisely where to look for him?” I was grasping for straws. If she was too uncomfortable to be here, we’d leave. “Just… don’t use the bathroom, okay? There’s a gas station next door if you need it.”

  Navy comically shivered and I wrapped my arm around her.

  “Look, if you want to leave, we can. I just wanted to get your mind off of things for a while.”

  She brushed her hair away from her face, sending it sprawling down her back and over my arm. “No. It’s fine. But next time, I pick the place.”

  “Knowing you, you’d pick the trampoline park.”

  “And you’d love it.”

  “Fuck yeah I would. Why did we leave me in charge of tonight’s plans?”

  “Good question.” She leaned her head so that it rested on my shoulder. We might’ve been scrunched like sardines, but it was nice having her so close.

  The bartender made his way down to us, and despite the definite chill of the clientele, the guy gave us a genuine smile. “What sounds good tonight?”

  “What do you want, Navy Jane? My treat tonight.”

  She ordered something called a climax and her cheeks took on the faintest bit of color as she side-eyed me. “I had one before,” she told me, as if she were underage and trying to play it cool.

  “Okay, good. Let’s make that double then,” I said, two fingers held up for the bartender. After he left, I leaned in until my lips were at Navy’s ear. “Now, tell me. Does it taste like one?”

  “I think I need a drink to answer that,” she said, turning until we were nose to nose. “You’re very close.” Her breath was warm and minty.

  “It was either I practically sit in your lap or we talk around this bitch,” I said, gently tapping my head against the column at my back. “What’s in this climax?”

  “Um.” She licked her lips. “Amaretto. Some banana alcohol, heavy cream, triple sec, and white chocolate.”

  “Sounds like a girl drink,” I said, teasing.

  “Which means it sounds delicious.”

  “Precisely. But the heavy cream.” I rubbed my stomach, already anticipating the ache I would have.

  “We’ll have to limit ourselves to them,” she said. “They’re dangerous.”

  She wasn’t lying. Thirty minutes later, we each had three empty shot glasses in front of us and a serious case of the giggles. She was more of a lightweight than me, and soon she didn’t even seem to notice the other patrons. They’d all busied themselves with their cigarettes and bourbon anyway, none of them paid us any mind.

  Navy’s eyes were bright and the pink in her cheeks had bloomed down her neck as well. Damn, she had the prettiest skin. Not in a Silence of the Lambs kind of way, but in the way that you wanted to keep looking at it, memorize all the freckles and beauty marks that made her so her. “What’s this from?” I asked, my eyes and then my finger grazing over the scar just above her left eyebrow. It was only about an inch long, but its stark whiteness stood out against the rest of her skin. How had I never noticed it before? It didn’t interrupt the hair in her eyebrow, but it intrigued me nonetheless.

  “Oh!” Navy said with a laugh. “It’s from the summer after we officially moved in with Aunt Isabel. Violet hit me in the face with a shovel.” She erupted in laughs when my response was to stare at her, slack jawed.

  “Like… on purpose?”

  “No.” Navy signaled for another two climaxes—Jesus, what a sentence—and continued. “We were in the backyard, playing in the shed. She wanted to turn on the lawnmower and I told her no. Then she wanted to play with Aunt Isabel’s hedge scissors/clippers and again I told her no. She picked up the shovel and when I told her to put it down, it was too heavy. She lifted her face, all snooty—you know, she couldn’t be called weak by her big sissy. She said, ‘I am STRONG,’ and turned suddenly on her heel, the shovel over her shoulder, and it clipped me across the eyebrow.”

  “Holy shit. A head wound. You probably bled everywhere.”

  “Oh, yes. Auntie wrapped me in a bed sheet she didn’t like too much and pointed a finger at me after she’d buckled me in the car. ‘Don’t you dare bleed on the upholstery,’ she said in her no-nonsense tone.”

  I laughed in spite of the seriousness of Navy’s face. “If there was ever a saying that explained Isabel so precisely, it’s that.”

  “Exactly. So, anyway, got a handful of stitches and my aunt rubbed an aloe vera leaf across my eyebrow for weeks after the scab crusted and fell off. Must have worked, because it’s only really visible up close.” Navy gestured to how close we were. “Like this.”

  “Okay, but you’ve left me hanging.” The bartender deposited our shots and left. Navy wrinkled her brow as she stared up at me in confusion.

  “What?”

  “Did you get blood on the upholstery?”

  “Hell no. She put the fear of God in me. Really, smart idea for you to have us leave her car at your place. The last time I had copious climaxes, I was sick everywhere.”

  “Oh, that happens to me too. Every time I climax, it’s like I’m the little girl from the Exorcist all over again.”

  “Shut up,” she said, choking on a laugh. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Not that kind of climax. This kind.” She tossed the shot back without waiting for me this time.

  “Look at you, so greedy for that climax that you won’t even let me finish mine.”

  Her cheeks burned brighter, her smiles were easier, and her laughs more boisterous. Man, in all the years she’d stood in as my DD, I’d really missed out on this uninhibited Navy, hadn’t I? Navy with her thick hair down, her eyes bright and glossy, her rosy lips spread in a near permanent smile. And when she leaned in to speak
to me over the music, her hand braced on my upper thigh as my nose inhaled her hair conditioner, my dick twitched. And that was even before she said, “Guess you gotta catch up.”

  Fuuuuuck. Was she flirting with me? I pulled back just a bit to get a gauge on her expression. She was always so easy to read, as long as I was looking directly at her. And the way her smile tipped up on one side, the way her heavily lashed eyes went all heavy-lidded, I assumed that she was flirting with me. But was it real flirting, or the kind that friends do? And a supplemental question flit through my brain: did friends flirt?

  I decided not to question it too much.

  “Well, if these delicious drinks might make you sick, perhaps we should switch. Maybe order some fries too to help soak this up?”

  “Good idea. But we don’t need fries. We had pizza.”

  “Correction: I had pizza. You took a couple bites, but you’ll need some sustenance.” I waved for the bartender’s attention.

  “Okay, fine.” Navy scooped a lip balm from her bag and rubbed it across her lips.

  Jesus, it was just lip balm. Not even colored. Were her lips always that rosy red, naturally? And why the fuck was lip balm application so erotic?

  “What do you want?”

  “Uh… what?” Unlike Navy, I was only approaching a gentle buzz. I was still lucid, but around Navy—this Navy—I felt like I was underwater. Words were processed much slower, hell, my senses reacted even slower when she leaned across me to signal the bartender, that small hand of hers braced inches from my dick. Which twitched, again. If she looked down, she’d come eye-to-eye with the one part of my body that wasn’t slowly reacting to her.

  “What do you want to switch to?” she asked as the bartender made his way closer to us.

  “Uh.” I wracked my seemingly pea-sized brain for something that would continue the buzz and not make us sick. “Can we get some fries? Lots of ketchup. And two sea breezes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s fruity,” said the bartender. “You’ll like it,” he said with a wink to Navy.